When a Friendship No Longer Fits
When a Friendship No Longer Fits
Blog Article
Friendships are key to a healthy and rewarding life, and good friends are a factor in longevity as well. Research also shows, however, that poor or conflictual relationships are more damaging to your well-being than no relationship, so it may be wise to assess whether your friendships still fit your life the way they did when the friendship began.
So, How Did the Friendship Begin?
Friendships are generally spurred by one of these three factors:
- Shared Interests: Because our interests may change over the years, friendships that were built on a love of skydiving, a favorite entertainer, true crime podcasts, book club meetups, or running marathons, for instance, might not last a lifetime if the fulcrum in the relationship was the shared interest.
- Shared Life Stage: Due to the way our lives unfold and our culture is shaped, we spend a great deal of time with people who are in the same age cohort as ourselves. From daycares to playgrounds to elementary through high school, we are all surrounded by agemates. We may head off to school or begin our careers, and though these are very different destinations, we are again among those who are likely in the same life stage that we occupy—student or employee. But when two friends go different ways, the friendship may fizzle out as their paths diverge too widely to bridge the gap.
- Proximity: Proximity can refer to the people you work beside on the job, the tenants in your apartment building, or your neighbors on the block. The more we are exposed to someone, the more we tend to develop positive feelings about them. But if the key to the friendship is proximity, moving to a new desk or a new home may signal the end of the friendship.Although a person may have thousands of friends or followers, there’s a limit to how many one-on-one, genuine friendships a person can manage. We only have so much “social capacity” to commit to friendships, so it’s totally natural that less close, less rewarding, or more labor-intensive friendships may lose their intensity or value over time. We may feel a little sad when we see once close friendships become more distant, but it’s part of the process of human development and human limits.
Other Reasons a Friendship May No Longer Fit
When someone feels that they “owe” someone their friendship, it’s no longer the type of friendship that brings the most joy. When we pity someone, that too can lead to keeping up a friendship longer than is ideal. The problem with these types of relationship balances is that friendships should not lead to “one up/one down” situations. Friends should feel that they are on an equal plane with each other—regardless of the differences that exist, whether in income, education, age, experience, etc.
Will You Know When the “Expiration Date” Arrives?
Sometimes a friend can’t be present for us the way we want them to be—or the way they want to be. When this happens, a good friend will bring up the topic and a productive conversation will result. Sometimes friends need to “take a break” from friendships when life is overwhelming them with other responsibilities. Good friends accept that friends have their own full lives and sometimes there is not enough room for them in their lives.
When you realize that you haven't chatted with a friend in months but have no desire to pick up the phone, that’s a sign that the friendship may have run its course. Ideally, both friends will realize their friendship isn’t the priority it used to be and be OK with its weakening or dissolving. When neither person is able to commit to a meetup or respond quickly to texts or calls, that may be a sign that the relationship is coming to a natural end. They may not admit to the other that their desire to keep the friendship going has diminished, but their mutual drawing away sends that message.
Can You Revive a Friendship That You've Let Fade?
People are dynamic, not static, and our needs and abilities shift over time. Circumstances that foreclosed a prior friendship may change and you may feel the desire to reach back out to revive the friendship. Remember that friendships are voluntary, though, and reaching out to an old friend may not always bring the result you want. But if you feel the urge to reconnect, here are some ideas:
- Send a card in the mail—getting a piece of snail mail is a rarity these days, so receiving a greeting card with a warm, personal message can feel like a gift.
- Text the old friend and let them know that they’d crossed your mind that day. Include an appropriate meme, if you think that they’d enjoy that. If they text back, consider asking them if they’d like to catch up.
- Call them on the phone—let them know you’ve been thinking about them and invite them to share what’s been going on in their lives. Express interest in them—we all like to share about ourselves.
- If you ended the friendship in a way that was less than ideal— ghosted them, canceled plans one too many times, etc.—acknowledge that you “let the ball drop” on the friendship and regret it.
Even if the friendship doesn’t get sparked again, you will gain a sense of satisfaction and possibly closure by taking a chance to reconnect. Feeling the need to reach back out can be a sign that you’re carrying baggage that you really need to put down.
Are You the Friend Who No Longer Fits?
Sometimes we get the feeling that we’re not as important to a friend as we feel that we should be. Some of us might wonder if we’ve done something wrong that we didn’t realize we’d done. But it might not be about you. It might just be that the friendship’s glue isn’t there anymore. Taking an objective view of a friendship isn’t always easy, but it can increase our understanding of what might be happening.
Unfortunately, if you feel that a friend is leaving you behind, it can be hard to accept. It’s important that people develop wide social support networks so that you don’t expect one person to meet all of your social needs. Remember that if someone has too few friends, they may try overly hard to keep the friendship going. There’s a danger in being too needy or too eager to change in order to try and keep a friendship going after its “expiration date.” Such friends are often outgrown by people who are moving forward in life. Desperation is one of the least attractive qualities in a friend. Sometimes we need to be a good friend to ourselves by doing the inner work we need to do to be able to be the kind of friend we would like to have.